I Want A Heart That Forgives

Kevin LeVar - "A Heart That Forgives"

Just a few lyrics from the song linked above:

I want a heart that forgives
A heart full of love
One with compassion just like Yours above
One that overcomes evil with goodness and love
Like it never happened, never holding a grudge
I want a heart that forgives that lives and lets live
One that keeps loving over and over again
One that men can’t offend
Because Your Word is within
One that loves without price, like You Lord Jesus Christ
I want a heart that loves everybody....even my enemies
I want to love like You, be like You, just like You did
I want a heart that forgives.

DEEP BREATH. Wiping the tears. I know that there are readers who are in different places in there life and in their relationship with the Lord. Most of us DO NOT know how to just FORGIVE. We don't know how to lay down our burdens on the altar and just say "I forgive."

For the most part forgiveness does not start right away. The not-wanting-to-forgive is keeping us from moving on, and having a closer relationship with God. But we cannot lie to ourselves. Or to God. We cannot say "I forgive or I give it all to you" when we really don't mean it.

Excerpts from Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissas Pinkola Estes. From the chapter Marking Territory: The Boundaries of Rage and Forgiveness Four Stages of Forgiveness

1. to forego---to leave it alone
2. to forebear---to abstain from punishing
3. to forget---to aver from memory, to refuse to dwell
4. to forgive---to abandon the debt

To forego: To take a break from thinking about the person or the event for a while. It is not leaving something undone, but rather more like taking a vacation from it. This prevents us from being exhausted, allows us to strengthen in other ways, to have other happiness in our lives.
To forebear: This builds focus toward the time when one goes to the next steps. It does not mean to go blind or dead and lose self-protective vigilance. It means to give a bit of grace to the situation and see how that assists.

To forget: To let go, to loosen one's hold, particularly on memory. To forget does not mean to make yourself brain dead. Conscious forgetting means letting go of the event, to not insist it stay in the foreground, but rather allow it to be relegated to the background. To move off stage.
We practice conscious forgetting by refusing to summon up fiery materials, we refuse to recollect. It means not to haul up certain materials and turn them over rand over again. Conscious forgetting means willfully dropping the practice of obsessing, intentionally outdistancing and losing sight of it. This kind of forgetting does not erase memory, it lays the emotion surrounding the memory to rest.

To Forgive: There are many ways and portions to forgiving a person, a community, a nation for an offense. It is important to remember that a "final" forgiveness is not surrendor. It is a conscious decision to cease to harbor resentment, which includes forgiving a debt and giving up one's resolve to retaliate. You are the one that decides when to forgive and what ritual to use to mark the event. You decide what debt you will now say needs not be paid further.

Some choose blanket pardon: releasing a person from any restitituion now or ever. Others choose to call a halt to redress in process, abandoning the debt, saying whatever is done is done, and the payback is now enough. Another kind of pardon is to release a person without his having made any emotional or other sort of restititution.

Forgiveness is the culmination of all foregoing, forebearing and forgetting. It does not mean giving up ones' protection, but one's coldness. Forgiveness is an act of creation.

Luke 17:3-4 (King James Version) 3 Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. 4 And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.

I want a heart that forgives. How about you?